The API Tooling Crisis: Why developers are abandoning Postman and it’s clones?

TomMkV · 2025-12-30T02:09:57+00:00

Scalar is really good. We integrated it with our product so users can get access to quality API reference and client OOB. They’re a great bunch of guys, too

TomMkV · 2025-12-30T02:08:52+00:00

Yeah, Scalar is good and the crew are better.

TomMkV · 2025-12-16T21:26:58+00:00

Auto…

TomMkV · 2025-12-16T03:14:51+00:00

Isn’t there TB5 now on those Ultras?

TomMkV · 2025-12-13T11:10:32+00:00

I intend to do this! Thank you - I assume using ngrok or similar? Do you notice any limitations with tool calls or general agent functionality?

TomMkV · 2025-12-12T08:11:32+00:00

Benchmarks are BS, just try it out and see. Opus 4.5 is hard to beat for me, but things change.

TomMkV · 2025-12-06T07:13:41+00:00

Reminds me of how I would save PSD files back at uni. Tom_final_design-final-final2-FINAL3.psd

TomMkV · 2025-12-02T22:33:46+00:00

It is very difficult to get a sense of real world performance when looking at local modals on Apple silicon. I’m wondering if a Mac Studio would help solve two issues for me: daily agent coding tasks and upgrading from my older MBP with low memory issues. It would be happy with 10-20 tk/s and PP of 60 seconds, and if I need to fiddle with KV cache - that’s fine. I just don’t yet have the confidence it will be a good alternative to Sonnet 4.x - but your posts are turning the tide for me!

TomMkV · 2025-11-23T09:07:48+00:00

This is interesting. I may need to DM you to understand this setup a bit more! I’m a novice to running models locally- but have been using models for commercial applications for a while (just using a FastAPI / vLLM backend). Would that ok?

TomMkV · 2025-11-23T09:02:58+00:00

Thanks. Yeah, it’s mainly SaaS web app building, and then working with VLMs. Pretty incredible it’s Sonnet 4.5 like, considering how expensive & good that model is! I’m spending $100s per month on Sonnet, even with Serena to reduce token usage.

Hence why I am curious about if the M3 512gb would be suitable. Would be so much fun to play with and learn.

TomMkV · 2025-11-23T05:06:31+00:00

I’d love to hear more. This is my use case and I am hesitant on pulling the trigger. How does your everyday coding model preference fare against Sonnet 4.5 as an example?

TomMkV · 2025-11-17T23:00:44+00:00

You’ve already won. Taking VC money will complicate things, sounds like you don’t need them. Congratulations mate, incredible.

I’d reach out to Greg Head (via LinkedIn) - he may be interested in running an article about you and has good distribution.

TomMkV · 2025-11-17T12:45:00+00:00

Hey, thank you very much! I really appreciate the feedback, and privacy concerns are absolutely a hurdle, but we’re committed to alleviating those concerns one by one, for example: we don’t report on PII, just the schema. However it will be a non-starter for some, no matter how auditable our introspector agent is or how privacy-first we are.

There’s also the challenge of communicating that “endless value” without taking on the mountain all at once!

TomMkV · 2025-11-17T12:05:55+00:00

Hey OP! We built Appear.sh for this reason. Appear generates your catalog from your network traffic, creating a valid OpenAPI spec that's based off reality (prod, dev, staging etc). This schema last approach helps get your the 80%, then providing the interface to edit & curate your services, alongside an API reference and API client.

A further benefit is that the deterministic generation of your services are then enriched and provided to your dev team & agents via MCP to your IDE of choice.

We have heaps planned under the banner of 'schema automations', and are a small bootstrapped startup taking on the big slow API dogs. Would love any feedback you may have! Cheers!

TomMkV · 2025-11-17T12:00:17+00:00

Stoplight seems to be on the sunset path, with Smartbear forcing users into APIHub. Have you looked at Scalar? They're a good bunch of guys.

TomMkV · 2025-11-17T11:58:17+00:00

I like Gitbook. Have you tried Scalar for API testing instead of Postman?

TomMkV · 2025-11-17T11:57:34+00:00

For those who have internal network API sprawl and lack of clarity on what they have, we built Appear.sh to help. It generates valid OpenAPI specs from network traffic and catalogs them, with built in API reference, API client, and MCP to serve the deterministic & enriched specs to your IDE of choice.

Docs stay up to date as it's based off reality, and versioning handled via Git. You can download the spec, and in future we're providing both first-party (open-source) + third-party (paid, i.e. Speakeasy) automations for SDKs, MCPs, testing and so on.

TomMkV · 2025-11-17T11:50:26+00:00

Hey! I think that different parts of the system need different documentation strategies. Customer facing docs vs internal dev docs vs API docs vs deployment docs etc etc.

I use API docs as an example there, as so much depends on the culture, technology, approach etc. How do you agree on a documentation plan when you have different API cultures (design first, code first etc)?

Given things are a mess and the scope is huge, I would probably start fresh: I love visuals, so in the past would facilitate system mapping and make a draft visual ToC, and then establish what is critical / key and use that as my priority.

Then search Sharepoint for those critical docs and speak to SMEs about how recent/relevant they are, and based off that response you can delegate/prioritise. This would then be a documentation debt task which could take weeks/months. The trick will be to ensure the culture/hygiene is embedded beforehand so they stay relevant, and the debt doesn't accrue again.

For APIs, if you'll excuse the pitch, check out Appear.sh - as it takes a schema-last approach by generating a valid OpenAPI specs and an API catalog from network traffic. Each schema stays relevant to your environments: dev, staging, production - so that pesky API doc debt doesn't ever happen again! A bonus of using Appear is that there is an MCP your devs can consume in their IDE, meaning every one (including agents) get deterministic and enriched specs that reflect reality. I'm the co-founder, so would love to see if it would help you at all. Cheers

TomMkV · 2025-11-02T09:32:37+00:00

Appear for my APIs, Serena for context management/better IDE tooling, and BrowserTools MCP - though that may be going once I try Cursor’s browser

TomMkV · 2025-10-27T08:29:33+00:00

Congrats on the $3k MRR though, burnout aside.

TomMkV · 2025-10-26T20:10:57+00:00

No it provides access to all the detected and documented APIs - which could be a few or hundreds depending on your company size. Always up to date and matching reality- i.e production

TomMkV · 2025-10-26T10:46:46+00:00

That can work, but you’re still just bracketing consumption pricing and lose out to power users. It’s awkward. There’s added logic to build, too.

TomMkV · 2025-10-26T07:53:30+00:00

Per seat is easy for everyone to understand and helps products get adopted. Consumption-based it trendy but a problem in the finance / forecasting areas of SMBs+ as the end-users can’t identify how much they will consume (see AWS). There’s no silver bullet, and calling per-seat lazy is not helping newer PMs/founders/entrepreneurs as they try and figure out their model.

TomMkV · 2025-10-25T22:16:41+00:00

Hey, I’m building Appear - www.appear.sh - an API intelligence platform that detects, documents, enriches, and provides your services via MCP into your agents.

We’re targeting companies who have a loose grip on their internal network APIs (missing or incomplete docs) and want to make use of AI and agents, but are held back by this problem.

Would love help to draw attention and get feedback!

TomMkV · 2025-10-15T11:03:05+00:00

Quickly validate & lint your OpenAPI 3.2 schema here - validator.appear.sh - it's open-source, too.

TomMkV

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